How to Get Your Business to Rank on Google’s First Page

September 1, 2020

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When prospective clients first approach digital agencies, they usually come with their “wish lists” in hand. These wish lists will differ in length and depth depending on the company, but typically focus upon and around specific Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) the company is looking to improve.

Explanations of what a KPI is and what it means for a business will vary greatly, but for today’s discussion, the following definition is as good as any we’ve seen lately:

“(KPI’s are) a set of quantifiable measures utilized by a company or industry to compare or gauge their performance, and how that performance relates to their ability to meet the operational & strategic goals set for the company.”

We felt it critical for everyone to have the same working understanding of KPI’s because it directly relates to one of the questions we most often get asked, and wish-list items that we most frequently see:

Why isn't my site ranking on Google?

It’s a perennial question that’s on the lips of business owners & executives across the globe and in countless industries. This question, and those like it, is related to search engine optimization (SEO); and if anyone is preparing to downplay the importance of SEO’s role in today’s digital marketing, consider this: U.S.-based businesses alone are projected to spend $80 billion on search engine optimization in 2020. Yes; billion with a “B.”

Every business owner & executive wants to know the secret to getting their business to show on the first page of Google’s search engine results page (SERP), just like you. There is no cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to ranking on Google, but there are some key reasons why you’re not on the first page.

Why is being on the 1st page of Google’s SERP so important?

The overwhelming majority of internet users never click through to the second page of Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs). Only 6 percent of clicks go to the 2nd page or beyond, which means that for every second your business is not ranking on Google, you’re losing potential business and slashing your audience.

Let’s discuss some ways to get your business on Google’s first page by correcting common SEO errors that most companies don’t even know they’re making.

Ready to boost your site and give your business a helping hand? Then keep reading!

How to Rank On Google: Content is King

There’s an old marketing saying that’s simple: content is king. It’s true, too. The more original, relevant content you have on your site, the more of a following you can create, and the more SEO practices you can put into action.

Let’s take a look at why well-curated content is so crucial to your site.

Content Helps You Bond With Your Audience

Suppose your business is regularly posting fresh content that engages with your audience and keeps them hooked. In that case, you can quickly build up a bond with your audience. Potential customers want to be actively involved with their brand of choice, rather than feel abstracted from them.

More Shares Means More Backlinks

In general, it’s better to have more links to your website, so try posting relevant, shareable, or exciting content. Readers will likely share links to your site on their blogs and social media. Get more backlinks, and Google will see your site as more of an authority worth promoting.

A Lack of Content Hurts Your Rankings in Search Results

If you don’t currently have a blog page on your website where you can target keywords and harness the power of search intent to draw customers to your website and share your content, you’re probably not going to rank too highly on Google. Have a business blog and update it regularly, making sure that you target specific keywords and create engaging content.

Keyword Research: A Key Responsibility

When researching SEO, you’ve probably heard of keyword research. Yet what does it entail, and why is it important? Won’t people find me regardless of what I write? Keyword research is crucial. Without it, your site has a far worse chance of being found.

What is Keyword Research?

Think about how you use Google. Do you write in whole sentences, or do you type in a selection of keywords and let Google’s “brain bots” do the heavy lifting for you? Most people, including ourselves, do the latter. This use of “key words” is where keyword research comes in. You need to know what keywords are of being searched for and which ones are not.

Keywords come in lots of different varieties. One of their critical identifying factors is their “difficulty,” referring to how hard it would be to rank on Google using these keywords.

For instance, let’s say that you’re a BMW dealership in Salt Lake City. There’s almost zero chance that you will move to the front page, or anywhere close to it, using the “BMW” search alone. Doing this will always bring up the company’s homepage, or corporate social media pages, a Wikipedia page, etc. And, since your BMW dealership will never outperform the BMW corporate digital marketing efforts, it is a tough keyword by which to try ranking your business. Instead, try to target “used BMW Salt Lake City,” and you’ll be able to rank!

How Do I Do Keyword Research?

Keyword research isn’t too difficult but can be time-consuming. If you want to research keywords, you’ll need to buy access to a research tool like Google Ads Keyword Planner, Ahrefs Keyword Explorer or SEMrush. Prices for these services will vary, and some can be free while others can be costly, but they are well worth the price paid for the results provided.

Is Your Site Slow? Speed It Up to Rank Higher On Google

Is your company’s website sluggish to load new pages? Is it noticeably slower than other pages? Google considers page speed to be very important for several reasons.

If your site is slow, it’s going to frustrate users and increase your bounce rate. This means that visitors will spend less time on your website, which means Google won’t consider your website useful and will rank it less highly. So how can you fix this problem?

Ditch Shared Hosting

If you’ve recently started your website, you might be using shared web hosting. This sharing is often cheaper than other alternatives, but it comes with some considerable downsides. “Shared” hosting means that the hosting provider stores your website on the same server with countless other sites. As processing power & bandwidth capacities are finite in any system, if one of those other sites uses a lot of bandwidth or a lot of the server’s computing power, your site will lag & suffer.

If you want to get the maximum performance out of your site, and the pages or content within, you should consider investing in a dedicated hosting configuration.

Compress Your Images

A good selection of high-quality images is vital for any website. Yet this doesn’t mean you should serve them, full-size to your visitors. If you’re sharing uncompressed images, it means there are extra megabytes of data that your visitor needs to download before their browser renders the page. The recommendation is to compress your image resolutions, so they measure in kilobytes rather than megabytes. This change alone can cut load times.

Opt For a Minimalistic Web Design

If your website design is too complicated, with many different transitions, buttons, effects, and more, it will take longer to load. It can also risk making your site look like a Geocities page, rather than a professional site.

Much like the “Keep It Simple, Stupid,” or KISS theory, if you want your site to project a professional look and improve its speed, choose a crisp, clean, and minimalist web design.

Research Your Competitors

When figuring out how to get on the first page of Google, make sure that you check on your competitors. Do they appear on the first search results page? If they are, this is excellent news for you, as it gives you a crucial research opportunity. Using one of the keyword research tools that we mentioned earlier, you can find out which of their specific content is finding the most success.

If you don’t have access to a keyword research tool, you can still do this. Take a look through your competitor’s blog content and find out what’s generating the most comments and shares. What are they giving their readers that you aren’t?

Once you’ve found a fruitful topic, write your blog inspired by this topic. It’s crucial that you don’t copy theirs: Google penalizes plagiarism severely, but you can find good inspiration from your rivals’ blogs.

Get Linked

Is anyone linking to your site, or is your site floating alone in the internet’s cluttered, wide-open spaces? Getting backlinks to your website is crucial.

It’s a crucial part of Google finding your site. Think of it like a roadmap: Google might stumble on your site, yet links serve as signposts, directing Google to it. The more backlinks you have, as we mentioned earlier, the more authoritative Google deems your site.

So how can you get backlinks? While you need to get other websites to link to yours, it isn’t entirely out of your control.

Guest Post

Many blogs will welcome guest posts, where you can link back to your business’s website. Each post will typically give you one free backlink.

Get Mentioned As a Client

Do you use the services of another business? Ask if they’d be happy to use you as a featured client, complete with a link back to your website.

Request Links On Any Mentions

When a blogger mentions your brand in a positive light but doesn’t link to you, we would suggest that you might wish to reach out to them and ask if they could link to you. Many will be happy to do so based on courtesy alone, and all it takes to get a link is an email.

Use Pay Per Click Advertising to Help Boost SEO

Pay per click advertising (PPC) lets you target specific keywords and get featured on the first page without any SEO work on your part. PPC is a more costly approach than the SEO techniques we’ve covered but can get you faster results, so it’s worth considering.

Ready for Expert Assistance in Figuring Out How to Get On the First Page of Google?

For those in our audience that are newbies to the world of SEO, or don’t spend all day thinking in terms of SEO, all of this work may sound too technical or complicated. It is, and at the same time it isn’t; and if you’d like some professional help with figuring out how to get your business on the first page of Google, we can help you.

We’re experts in SEO – and had better be, as SEO is in our name – as well as pay per click advertising, and most other aspects of digital marketing. If you would like to put our services to use for your business, please contact us!

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